The Critical Guide to
the Warren Illustrated Magazines
1964-1983
by Uncle Jack
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| Barr |
Creepy #34 (August 1970)
"'X'-tra...'X'" ★1/2
Story by Robert Rosen
Art by Jack Sparling
"Lifeboat!" ★1/2
Story by Nicola Cuti
Art by Ken Barr
"The Cool Jazz Ghoul" ★★1/2
Story by Al Hewetson
Art by Ken Kelly
"Minanker's Demons" ★
Story by Buddy Saunders
Art by John G. Fantuccio
"Forgotten Prisoner of Castlemare" ★
Story by Robert Rosen
Art by Bill Fraccio & Tony Tallarico
"The Swamp in Hell!" ★
Story by Al Hewetson
Art by Don Vaughn
"Ando!" ★
Story by Robert Rosen
Art by Syd Shores
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He said...
("'X-tra...'X'") |
After his speech on the "'X'-tra...'X'" chromosome, a renowned professor is approached by Bruno Arnz, a man who is convinced that every full moon he becomes the "Mangle Murderer," a fiend who has been terrorizing the city. The Professor agrees to monitor Arnz in an effort to prove his theory (that murderers have an extra "X" chromosome that allows its host to murder without any malice or knowledge of the deed) correct and the very first full moon that arises, the egghead has his proof. Arnz is a werewolf! The Professor explains to Arnz that he may be able to "seal off" the X-factor and cure the man, but the procedure is risky. Sure enough, Arnz dies on the operating table but, the Professor sighs, there's only room for one "Mangle Murderer" in this sleepy bedroom town anyhow.
Yep, you guessed it! The Prof was a werewolf the whole time! A lycanthrope with a twist, though, as this is one that manages to keep operating while changing into something more deadly. The typos and mistakes around this joint were deadly already, but "'X'-tra...'X'" contains the biggest head-scratcher of all: two panels, different art, same dialogue in the word balloons! How did that one happen?
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...he said!
("'X-tra...'X'") |
The Lady, a ship drifting through space, picks up a distress signal from the planet Greta. The landing party discovers a world filled with carnivorous creatures but devoid of civilization. Then up pops Steve Reeves stand-in, Aceles, a bohunk of a guy who happily agrees to hop aboard the "Lifeboat!" heading back to Earth. On board, the scientists of
The Lady discover a weird secret a few minutes too late: Aceles carries within his head the minds of his dead civilization and can gain control of any of the space explorers' bodies. Well, at least I think that's what's going on, but if anyone else can explain the dopey plot and the wet noodle of a climax, be my guest. Ken Barr's art is not bad but that's the only reason to turn the pages on this one.
Sax maestro by night, funeral home worker by day, Pete Paul longs for the big time. While musing about his own nightclub out loud, Pete is surprised to see none other than Satan pop up in his apartment. Ol' Scratch has the usual bargain in mind: unlimited wealth in exchange for Pete's soul. At first hesitant, Pete finally gives in, but "The Cool Jazz Ghoul" proves he's more than a match for Satan.
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| "The Cool Jazz Ghoul" |
The first interior work by future superstar Ken Kelly, "The Cool Jazz Ghoul" is also, alas, his
last full-length work for Warren. Kelly would soon become the best Warren cover artist of the 1970s and, through his exposure with the company, go on to massive success with the influential covers for KISS's
Destroyer and
Love Gun. Here, Kelly (billed as Ken
Kelley) is a little raw with his penciling, so perhaps the painted single images he contributed to so many Warren covers represented the wisest path for Ken to follow. The story, chock full of the obligatory typos, missing words, and head-scratchers (I'm not sure Pete Paul was really thinking his situation was an "
unmigrated drag," but perhaps Al Hewetson knows lingo better than I do), is meandering and uncentered and climaxes with a hell of a cliffhanger. It seems unfinished, actually. But I'll give Hewetson a bit of credit for trying something new and an extra star for the rarity of a Kelly full-lengther.
When the maiden Dristara is kidnapped by the vicious Minanker, Neron of Andradorn must cleave his way through flying bat-men and giant rock goddesses to save his precious. Amateur time at Warren Publishing in both script and art, "Minanker's Demons" resembles something Warren might have seen in a Comicon program book. There's not one new idea or stirring image here; Saunders & Fantuccio had a lot to learn from Thomas & Sanders if they were going to pump out a successful Conan pastiche.
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Early Photoshop experiment
("Forgotten Prisoner of Castlemare") |
Baron Sorgi and Lord Basti fight each other for control of Castlemare, "a remote region of Italy," and its poor villagers. Both tyrants attempt to bleed the people dry by overtaxing and seizing land but their undoing is their hatred for each other. Basti traps and shackles Sorgi in his wine cellar but is killed while exiting the dungeon. Sorgi starves to death and becomes a model kit in 1966. Seriously. So many questions abound here. The story goes that Aurora contracted Warren to publicize its then-new monster model line and whip up an all-new monster to be immortalized in plastic. "The Forgotten Prisoner of Castlmare" was released in 1967 and Castlemare (or Castelmare as it's spelled on the actual model box) and the other models were immediate hits. So why wait three years to run the strip if you want to pump up sales? Why assign your worst artist to delineate? Good questions. The strip is buried halfway through the zine, almost as an afterthought; the final panel is a tacky photo of the kit box; and the script is lukewarm Poe (elements of "Amontillado" and "The Black Cat" are ripped off shamelessly by writer Rosen). I gotta say though... that model kit is the bomb.
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| "Ando!" |
With "The Swamp in Hell!," Al Hewetson gives us a sneak preview of the kind of bilge he'd pump out for Skywald very soon after. Al's tale of a bog monster, risen from the Thames but tamed by the kindness of a blind man, is "borrowed" nearly whole cloth from the similar scene in
Bride of Frankenstein, but Al cleverly leaves off an ending that makes sense. If you can't dazzle them with brilliance...
This genuinely awful issue ends with... a genuinely awful tale of a scientist/Baron who, with the help of his brute servant "Ando!," strives to create a "superman" by experimenting on villagers against their will. When the farmers he's kidnapped keep dying on the operating table, Baron Egghead picks "Ando!" as his next guinea pig."Ando!" has the feel of a weak Marvel origin story, contrived and stupid, with primitive art from veteran Shores. Let's put this package of junk in our rear-view quickly.
-Peter
Jack-Amen to that! It's not a good sign when the best rating I give to any story in an issue of
Creepy is two stars. I gave that to "Lifeboat!," which is a bit disjointed but overall a pretty good story that could've used more space to develop. Also earning two stars was "The Cool Jazz Ghoul," almost exclusively due to Kelly's cool art, which (to my untrained eye) looks like pencil or charcoal or something very grey. "Forgotten Prisoner of Castlemare" gets a star and a half due to the last panel that reproduces the model kit ad, though it takes Uncle Creepy to try to explain why a chubby character in the story ends up as a very skinny skeleton. The other four stories are strictly from hunger and get a one-star rating. I laughed at the page in "'X-tra...'X'" where the woman riding in a horse-drawn carriage speaks as if she's from 1970s' Brooklyn, sword and sorcery stories like "Minanker's Demos" leave me cold (and confused), "The Swamp in Hell!" is a derivative tale with wretched art, and "Ando!" is just plain dumb. Next!
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| Kelly |
Eerie #29 (September 1970)
"Loophole!"★★
Story by Nick Cuti
Art by Jack Sparling
"The Fiend Planet"★★★
Story by Buddy Saunders
Art by Dan Adkins
"The Bloodstaff"★★
Story & Art by Rich Buckler
"Gallery of Horror"★★1/2
Story by Buddy Saunders
Art by Carlos Garzon
"The Vorpal Sword"★★★
Story by Nicola Cuti
Art by Tom Sutton
"Strange Gateway!"★★
Story by T. Casey Brennan
Art by Jack Sparling
"Snow Job!"★1/2
Story by Douglas Moench
Art by Jack Sparling
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| "Loophole!" |
After the time travel machine was invented in 1982, it wasn't long till someone discovered a "Loophole!" in the dictum that time travelers have to follow the laws of the time to which they travel. The crew of the
Savage travel to nearly 2,000,000 years B.C. in order to continue a program of killing people in the past in order to prevent overpopulation in the future. In wiping out a tribe of people, the ancestors of one of the crew of the
Savage, a woman named Riely, are killed, and she disappears. The ship travels even further back in time and kills a man and woman; unfortunately, they were in the Garden of Eden, and the
Savage crew disappears, along with the rest of the future human race.
Even though the storytelling is kind of clunky and the art is kind of ugly, I enjoyed "Loophole!" The end is telegraphed about halfway through but I got a kick out of the sheer audacity of going through with the murder of Adam and Eve. It's obvious, dumb, and kind of entertaining. And Ken Kelly's cover is a darn good Frazetta imitation!
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Reed and Sue Richards
make a cameo in
"The Fiend Planet" |
In the 22nd century, man invented a teleportation device that could send people instantly across the universe. The only problem was that there had to be a receiver at the other end. A starship is sent on a 100-year trip to the planet Gamma Quad to place a receiver there. A century later, the two men and two women on the ship awaken from suspended animation and land safely on the planet, only to find that there seems to be no one back on Earth to receive their transmissions. Scary creatures appear to kill off the quartet of space travelers, but it turns out that Earthmen invented a quicker method of travel and beat them to Gamma Quad, where they were genetically modified to ensure long-term survival. The modifications caused them to turn into what the spacemen thought were scary alien creatures.
"The Fiend Planet" is a brisk and well-illustrated six-pager that features two couples of space travelers garbed like the Fantastic Four and scary aliens (actually genetically-modified humans) who look like Mike Sekowsky's Demons Three from
Justice League #10. The whole package is satisfying and fun and it doesn't hurt that Dan Adkins can draw better than most of the Warren artists.
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| "The Bloodstaff" |
Kunwar the mercenary is shocked to awaken to find all his men killed during the night. Even more shocking is to see his face reflected in a pool of water as that of a demon! He recalls the dying words of his father, who counseled him to keep "The Bloodstaff" always at his side to guarantee his safety. Suddenly, Kunwar's precious staff is stolen by tiny warriors and he is kidnapped and taken before Methuzda, the witch queen, who explains that he is really a demon and a spell that kept him seeming human is wearing off. Kunmar slays her and returns to the forest, where he is promptly killed by hunters to whom he appears in demon form.
I thought this was another boring S & S story the first time I read it, but on re-reading it to write the capsule summary I saw that it was a bit more clever than I thought and I increased my rating from 1.5 stars to 2. Buckler's writing is not bad and much of his art is above-average for a Warren mag, though one page in particular is pretty sketchy.
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Garzon's work has an Eisner influence in
this panel from "Gallery of Horror." |
Horror story writer Regis O'Neill buys the old Bierce House and finds that within is a "Gallery of Horror"! On the walls are giant paintings of scenes from classic tales of terror and O'Neill becomes convinced that they inspired other writers. Strange things begin to happen, so he buys a guard dog, but the pooch is soon killed. After a crash destroys the stairs, he burns all the paintings but soon becomes the victim of a giant spider.
Buddy Saunders had me most of the way but the ending makes no sense, at least not to me. If all of the scary monsters came alive from the paintings and O'Neill got rid of the paintings, where did the big spider come from? At least Carlos Garzon's art is evocative and spooky. This looks to be the first Warren credit for the artist from Colombia and I hope it's the start of better art from foreign artists.
Royal Magician Tok asks Prince Eric to take "The Vorpal Sword" and slay the ogre Jubb. Off goes Eric on a slow-moving giant slug, but his nights are not so lonely once he discovers that by saying the name of his beloved, Nina, the sword turns into the gorgeous babe. She is just about to tell him that she's pregnant when a beast lunges to eat her; a quick utterance of her name backwards and she is a sharp blade again, just in time to slay the monster. Eric reaches the castle of Jubb and is chained up by the ogre, but Nina comes to the rescue with a dagger that she reveals is their son.
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| "Strange Gateway!" |
Tom Sutton's art is impressive in this story, especially on the two-page splash, and Cuti's humor is a welcome relief from all of the too-serious S & S tales we've suffered through recently in the Warren mags. It's this sort of humor that would serve the writer so well just a few years later over at Charlton on
E-Man.
Charles Denwood buys an antique mirror as a Christmas present for his wife, Vera. She is fired from her job and their financial troubles mount; even the mirror seems to be falling apart. Charles discovers writing on the back of the mirror that says it is a "Strange Gateway!" to a world the opposite of his own. At first afraid to pass through the mirror, Charles soon falls through and finds himself in a paradise! He returns to his own world and brings Vera through the mirror, and all is well!
Yep, I guess the absence of a twist ending in one of these stories is like a twist ending in itself, since the characters surprisingly live happily ever after! There is some noodling around with the spirit of the old wizard Marno, who enchanted the mirror, but in the end Charles and Vera leave their miserable existence and travel through the mirror to a better world. Who would have expected that?
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| "Snow Job!" |
Americans exploring the Himalayas in search of Yeti hire a mysterious guide and try to photograph the legendary creatures at night but are shocked to discover that the fabled beasts are not Abominable Snowmen but actually werewolves!
A half-decent issue of
Eerie ends badly with this mediocre story by Doug Moench, who would later go on to script Marvel's
Werewolf By Night. "Snow Job!" is is not a good start for the 22-year-old scribe, though the snowy setting is fairly well illustrated by Jack Sparling. Either this story or the one in
Vampirella (below) is Moench's first pro credit.
-Jack
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| "The Vorpal Sword" |
Peter-Is it my imagination or is the science fiction around here getting even lousier? If you take a look at "Loophole!" and "The Fiend Planet," you'll know what I mean. But don't do it, I warn you. "Fiend Planet" has one of those laughably bad expositories designed to help the reader understand what just took place. Only problem is, Buddy Saunders's wrap-up speech makes it even more confusing! Fantasy doesn't fare much better. Rich Buckler would become a great funny book artist a few years later but in 1970 he was a mere pup ("The Bloodstaff" was Buckler's first pro sale as a writer/artist), and it shows. Lots of elves, a vampire plant, a twist ending that isn't that startling, and all I took from it was wondering whether it was Buckler or the letterer who couldn't spell "forest." Thanks to its sense of humor, "The Vorpal Sword" is passable sword-and-sorcery (and, by process of elimination, the best story of the issue), but "Gallery of Horror" and "Strange Gateway" are dismissible fluff (the latter is
maudlin dismissible stuff). I'm a sucker for a story set high in the snowy mountains, but "Snow Job" wastes both its setting and suspenseful buildup with one of those "I'm not a vampire, I'm a ghoul!"-type climaxes. Rubbish.
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| Frazetta |
Vampirella #7 (September 1970)
"The White Witch!" ★★
Story by Nick Cuti
Art by Tom Sutton
"The Mind Witch" ★1/2
Story by Nick Cuti
Art by Ernie Colon
"The Black Witch" ★1/2
Story by Nick Cuti
Art by Billy Graham
"Plague of the Wolf" ★
Story by Doug Moench
Art by Frank Bolle
"Terror Test!" ★
Story by R. Michael Rosen
Art by Bill Fraccio & Tony Tallarico
"The Survivor" ★★1/2
Story by Buddy Saunders
Art by Ernie Colon
"The Collection of Creation" ★★
Story by R. Michael Rosen
Art by Jerry Grandenetti
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| "The White Witch!" |
Writer Nick Cuti dreams up a "Witch Trilogy" this issue, three stories about witches drawn by different artists. First up is "The White Witch!" Rock star Zenia is, in reality, a witch who can't survive sunlight. She really wants to go out in the day so she whips up what she thinks is a cure but, alas, the potion doesn't work. Her beau, painter Jud (or Judd, depending on the panel), stays patient even while his gorgeous girl talks wacky but, in the end, the truth comes out when he inadvertently opens the curtains and fries his chick.
Not a good way to open your trilogy, Nick; in fact, "The White Witch!" is a meandering mess that escapes a one-star rating on the basis of its art. Zenia's character and the circumstances surrounding her malady make no sense whatsoever and I was confused as hell halfway through. At times, it looks as though Tom Sutton ignored the words and whipped up something nice to look at. The art is the only thing holding Chapter Two together as well. "The Mind Witch" is Carrie Thorp, a "seer" who sucks the souls from her clients and keeps them stashed in her crystal ball. But, no, wait... she's not really a seer, she's not really a witch, she's actually Galaxy M-31 from the Andromeda constellation! Seriously! Carrie intends to populate barren planets with her captured souls but, at the last moment, she's undone (in an inane reveal) by the psychologist sent to study her. He's actually Galaxy M-32, sent by Andromeda to capture the wayward #31. More proof that Warren science fiction really sucked.
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| "The Black Witch" |
So, can "The Black Witch" save Nick Cuti from embarrassment? What do you think? Zelda is "The Black Witch" and she's just found out her squeeze, Jaol Jones, is seeing the lovely Millie Pride on the side. In a moment of stupidity, Jaol tells the evil Zelda that he's intending on proposing to Millie. Bad mistake. In a rage, Zelda kills Jaol and then heads to Millie's place, where he turns the terrified girl into (what else?) a praying mantis. But Zel was too quick to pronounce Jaol as dead and he vows to track the Black Witch down and kill her. Zelda sends one of her zombies to finish the job but when the hit goes South, she shows up at Jaol's pad to do the deed herself, disguised as a black widow spider. Just in time, Millie the Mantis arrives to munch on the arachnid. Like the scripts for the two previous "Witch" tales, "The Black Witch" is near indecipherable with bizarre twists and turns, saved from a flush down the "Tripe Toilet" by some really nice Billy Graham work. The three artists involved with the "Witch Trilogy" were on their game but it's a pity there are words to accompany the pretty pitchers.
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No, seriously, this is as exciting as it gets
in "Plague of the Wolf"! |
The next two stories, "Plague of the Wolf" and "Terror Test!," are even worse, since neither boasts decent graphics. "Plague" is another of those cliched "Is this guy the werewolf? Nope, it's really his girlfriend!" clunkers readable only for the unintended laughs. There's a werewolf stalking the city and everyone is terrified. Suddenly, in the middle of the story we're introduced to Jim, who's convinced something terrible is going to happen to him tonight and so must cancel his date with Jean! Jean's not having any of that nonsense; he'll keep the date or he'll be looking for another place to lay his hat. Jim spends a tense six panels looking at the clock and waiting for the moon to come out while Jean gets dressed and does her hair (all blandly delineated like a newspaper strip by Frank Bolle, who was moonlighting at Warren while illustrating,
surprise surprise surprise, newspaper strips). Suddenly, Jean's face is kept in shadows but Jim keeps his word, showing up and still prattling on about fate, even showing off a pentagram on his palm. "I thought so... I just wanted to make sure!" says Jean the werewolf as she tears Jim to pieces. Holy cow, a werewoman in a magazine devoted to female monsters? Who'da thunk?
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| "Terror Test!" |
When their spaceship is hit by a meteor, a crew of explorers must land on an unknown world filled with terror. One member is attacked by
The Giant Claw (Columbia Pictures, 1957
->) while scouting the planet and is mortally wounded. While resting in sick bay, he is exsanguinated by his wife, who just happens to be a vampire. Turns out the whole lunatic binge is a "Terror Test!" conducted by NASA scientists to see if a man can survive a lengthy period of loneliness in space. As our frazzled astronaut comes out of his sleep, we discover that the test was a failure. He's become a crazed madman who murders the scientists with an axe. "Terror Test!" is seven pages of pure poetry, surely the apex in the careers of the Frallarico Brothers and "writer" Rosen. It's the funny book equivalent of the
Mad Doctor of Blood Island films, or one of those Rhino Records compilations of bad actors singing badly. You know you shouldn't keep reading this thing but...
you... just... can't... stop!
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| "The Collection of Creation" |
"The Collection of Creation" is a variation on Dorian Gray, but not a very good one. A beautiful woman entices an artist into painting a portrait of her but there's a very dark secret hidden behind that beautiful face. Turns out she's Isis, daughter of King Amenophis, and she's been kept alive all these centuries by draining the life from men by kissing them. The painter can't help himself and he gives Isis another forty years of life by planting one on her. The climax of the story is handled like a twist but we've already been given all the information we need, so the final panel falls flat. Tony Williamsune gets the credit for the art but it's very definitely the work of Jerry Grandenetti and JG gives us plenty of his "melty shadows" style.
The last surviving being of an alien race sits alone on his planet and waits for someone to come and relive him of his boredom. This creature has managed, through the years, to perfect a method to transfer its being into another vessel. When a rocket from Earth lands and a research party disembarks, the creature eyes new hosts. "The Survivor" isn't perfect but it's the best story this issue and one that actually makes you think. It's also got a great twist in its tail and some decent Colon art (Colon has climbed out of the cellar and now sits comfortably among the second-tier artists at Warren); with the artist contributing some dazzling panel layouts.
-Peter
Jack-I had a three-way tie this issue among stories I rated two stars each: "The White Witch!," for Sutton's art, which is below average for him but above average for Warren at this stage; "Plague of the Wolf," which makes fairly nice use of wordless panels to advance the story and create suspense; and "The Collection of Creation," for the hyper-stylized, late-period Grandenetti art. Billy Graham's art elevates "The Black Witch," but Ernie Colon's art isn't doing much for me these days, so I did not enjoy either "The Mind Witch" or "The Survivor." "Terror Test!" is one of the worst stories I've read yet: the writing is bad but the art is so bad it makes some of the stuff on the Fan Pages look like pro work.
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Next Week...
Could we be seeing
the second coming of
Robert Kanigher? |
